Wireless e-mail steps up to the plate

For today's wireless operators, building a network isn't just a radio game anymore. With the increasing importance of data offerings, wireless operators must now focus on things such as e-mail platforms and maintaining databases. Some operators - most likely the smaller ones - may outsource the function to other service providers, which will host the application. But some of the larger operators are interested in running their own e-mail platforms, and that involves learning to manage databases and creating redundancies themselves.

Software.com, which targets its InterMail platform to service providers in the landline world, recently introduced its latest version of the product aimed at wireless operators. InterMail Mx 5 supports compact HTML (CHTML), which is widely used in Japan, and wireless markup language (WML). In addition, it uses the Internet standard directory lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) for storing data. That may be crucial to allowing operators to integrate services.

"Most wireless operators were considering an application like a vertical," said John MacFarlane, CEO and founder of Software.com. So each application such as voice mail, 411, home location register (HLR) and caller ID had its own private directories and storage systems.

Software.com customers can take advantage of the growing pains that the landline Internet world went through. In the past, different companies used different proprietary directory systems. "If they couldn't relate to others or allow developers to tap into it, it wasn't as powerful," said Dana Gardner, research director for Internet infrastructure for The Aberdeen Group. By using LDAP, Software.com can offer a more robust product.

"What the Internet is doing for mobile providers is bringing in the horizontal - allowing them to use the same technology across the different applications they offer," MacFarlane said. With that capability, operators can integrate different offerings to enable services such as unified or instant messaging. They also can enable simple capabilities, including offering users a single sign-in code rather than asking them to log in separately for each service.

Implementing a system such as InterMail is no easy feat. It requires operators to purchase software, servers and possibly other equipment as well as storage. "It depends on the size of the company. Some of the Tier 2 and [Tier] 3 operators won't have the economies of scale to justify offering these features in-house," MacFarlane said.

Large operators may want to spend money on this, though. "Having a directory or database or whatever it is that connects you to the customer is among the things you want to keep close to your vest," Gardner said. Maintaining databases keeps the operator one step closer to owning the customer.

Software.com has the experience and can offer wireless operators a scalable and highly reliable platform, which is key to offering services such as e-mail, he said. A wireless environment presents unique challenges because an uninterrupted connection isn't guaranteed. "A sudden disruption could be a real disaster in terms of getting the right message to the right people," Gardner said.

Wireless operators aren't accustomed to the kind of reliability that e-mail providers offer. Voice mail, for example, is typically not completely backed up; when it fails, messages are lost.

That reliability is key for GTE.net, which uses InterMail to offer an e-mail platform on an outsourced basis to wireless and other types of operators. The company hopes that one of its biggest customers will be Verizon Wireless, the company formed by the Vodafone AirTouch, Bell Atlantic and GTE combination. "Our environment is fully recoverable," said Michael Bolduc, director of product management at GTE.net.

As an outsourcer, GTE.net will be providing services such as security, tunneling and administration - functions that a wireless operator might not want to take on internally.

But outsourcing the function isn't for every operator. "The downsides of outsourcing are feature functionality and timing," Bolduc said. An operator could hope to offer a device such as a personal digital assistant that might not be supported on the outsourcer's platform.